Wheeler, Hundt join Obama-Biden transition team: Range of wireless veterans to aid new administration

Major fundraisers who previously were highly influential in the wireless space have assumed key roles on the Obama-Biden transition team, a move that comes amid efforts by the Democratic president-elect to limit the clout of lobbyists in putting a new government in place.
Thomas Wheeler, former head of cellular industry association CTIA and on temporary leave as a managing director of Core Capital Partners, was named a member of the Obama-Biden transition project’s agency review working group. Wheeler, a contributing columnist for RCR Wireless, will be responsible for science, technology, space and arts agencies. The Obama-Biden transition team did not break out precisely which agencies Wheeler will be responsible for, but it appears he could have clout on post-election staffing and policy decisions involving the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the new political regime.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wheeler raised between $100,000 and $200,000 for the Obama campaign through the bundling of contributions from friends, business associates and others. Wheeler is among those high-tech heavyweights who, despite having ties to the Clinton-Gore administration, threw their support behind Obama in the early stages of his presidential run when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was regarded as the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Another individual in that category is Reed Hundt, a former Clinton appointee who gained notoriety during the 1990s for overseeing the first spectrum auctions. Hundt will be responsible for international trade and economic agencies for the Obama-Biden transition team. Hundt, who was a principal in now-defunct Frontline Wireless L.L.C.’s aborted campaign to secure a national public safety-commercial wireless license, collected between $50,000 and $100,000 in bundled contributions for the Obama presidential campaign. Hundt currently serves as a part-time senior adviser to consulting firm McKinsey & Co, and is a member of various companies’ boards of directors.
Other telecom policymakers who worked in the Hundt FCC also have prominent roles on the Obama-Biden transition team.
Donald Gips, former head of the FCC’s International Bureau and on temporary leave as an executive at Level 3 Communications, will be one of three agency review chairmen for the Obama-Biden transition team. Gips and Julius Genachowski, the latter a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama’s and former chief counsel to Hundt at the FCC, have been serving as members of the transition team’s advisory board. Genachowski is special adviser to Greenwich, Conn.-based General Atlantic, a private equity investment firm. In addition, he is managing director of Rock Creek Ventures, a venture-capital firm.
Gips and Genachowski also were big bundlers for Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with each cobbling together at least $500,000 in individual contributions for the presidential campaign.
Jon Wilkins, who worked at the FCC from 1998 to 1999 and on partial leave as a principal at McKinsey & Co., also was named to the Obama-Biden transition team’s agency review working group.
Though not having an official title on the Obama-Biden transition team, former FCC chairman William Kennard – a Clinton appointee who succeeded Hundt as agency chief – is likely to have an influential voice on telecom and high tech matters during the transition and afterward when the Obama administration takes power early next year. Kennard, a managing director of The Carlyle Group’s global telecommunications and media unit, was a $500,000 bundler for Obama.
Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, meantime, is a member of the Obama-Biden economic transition economic advisory board. Schmidt recently withdrew his name as a potential candidate for chief technology officer in the Obama administration. Nevertheless, Schmidt is expected carry weight on telecom and tech issues in the new administration.
Lobbying restrictions governing the Obama-Biden transition include the following:
— Federal lobbyists cannot contribute financially to the transition.
— Federal lobbyists are prohibited from any lobbying during their work with the transition.
— If someone has lobbied in the past 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied.
— If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the administration for 12 months on matters in which they worked.
A gift ban was also enacted to reduce influence of special interests during the transition of power.